Bronte Media

Sometimes, you just have to laugh at the absurdity of ‘experts’. Take Josh Martin from IDC. Never met him, never heard of him, until today. But go and read a CNET wrap of a report he wrote on YouTube. It’s a clanger. If Josh Martin played basketball, I am sure the New York Knicks would draft him in the first round. It’s that bad.

Here’s the leader:

“Josh Martin, an IDC research analyst, issued a report Thursday asserting that YouTube will struggle to squeeze profits from its video-sharing business, primarily because its audience has grown accustomed to paying nothing for the service.”

Hey Josh why not sub in CBS or NBC for YouTube and video-sharing for Television and see if the logic holds up. The business model is called advertising. It’s a whole lot more profitable than subscriptions. Newspapers only offset a small fraction of the paper costs with subscriptions. Magazines give it all to newstands and try to nearly give away subscriptions. Why are people in love with subscriptions?

But the quality of content on YouTube is lower, Josh retorts. “The majority of the video clips involve budding musicians, comedians, filmmakers or just people clamoring for attention. Other clips are grittier. A viewer can often find clips of violent accidents and bloody shark attacks. Sometimes users post clips that include nudity and sexually graphic images.”

Who cares? YouTube, like MySpace, is in the Wal-Mart supermarket media business. Horribly low CPMs and insanely high usage. The books will balance. Murdoch will get a return on his $600m investment. But both businesses aren’t Yahoo or Google or eBay. They are much smaller but that doesn’t mean they aren’t businesses. I think that’s where people have the most problem. Accepting they can be businesses just not huge ones.

The title of the article is “Is YouTube a flash in the pan?”. YouTube’s traffic doubled last month. That’s right doubled. From insanely high numbers.

Although comscore data is far from reliable, he couldn’t have timed the report more poorly. In addition, NBC has just signed an advertising agreement to promote shows. Josh grasps at the straws by saying that users don’t want show promotions and prefer other content. Josh, I prefer watching the Amazing Race over the Viagra ads in the commercial breaks. THAT’S THE WAY THINGS HAVE ALWAYS BEEN.

I’ll wait with baited breath for the next insightful missive from Josh. If only for the humor value.

Jay Weintraub has written two of the best blog posts I have read in some time. Following the merger of NetBlue and Vendare, he has put together a fantastic business history of both. Netblue here and Vendare here.

In random facts and as a footnote to the Blink.com mention in the Vendare entry, a company that I co-founded, BookmarkBox, was acquired by Blink in December of 1999 after they raised a truckload of cash.

Who’s your father?
Who’s your farrr-ther?
Who’s your father referee?
Never had one
Never was one
You’re a bastard referee

Back from the stands of Germany

Sometimes you lose, sometimes you win. On the same day as panning Google, I’ll give them credit. This is very cool.

The project is basically an audio recorder on your laptop that listens for when you watch TV. When you do, it tries to match the audio signature with the show you are watching.

The article says one use may be to display contextual content about the show. zzzzzzz

How about Hitwise measurement for TV? Alexa rankings for TV Shows?

How about behavioral targeting when the user is online and checking their email? Targeting AdWords based upon show preferences?

Doubleclick DART for TV? Advertisers would finally know exactly how many people actually watch their ads! Conversion tracking from TV advertising to the web! Accountability people.

Don’t mind the fact that people would initially hold the fear that their every move is being monitored

This from a Forbes article poking fun at Eric Schmidt not really being in charge. He is. But he’s not. Seriously.

According to Peter Norvig, who directs Google research, “We rely on the Lake Wobegon Strategy, which says, ‘Only hire candidates who are above the mean of your current employees.’ “

Really cute Peter. In reality that is near impossible as Google has had to ’scale’ itself from a few employees to over six thousand - and the majority of the growth stacked in past year. Visiting Google in 2006 is like orientation day at a University - lots of smart kids who are not sure of what to do and where to be. A big percentage have worked there for less than six months.

There is a lot of ‘gravity’ at work. Ironically, a company in slow-growth times and a down market has a lot more chance to to implement ‘Lake Wobegon Strategy’. Google, one of the fastest growing companies (new employees in 2006 / total employees), has the least chance.

What perhaps is frustrating (or worrying), is that Google thinks that the laws of gravity don’t apply.

Is a lighter version of a local yellow pages, packed with reviews and call tracking pastel yellow pages?

In a very interesting experiment, Insider Pages - a consumer written yellow pages firm - has put together a 64-page printed product for Pasadena CA and says that it will roll out in more markets.

Perhaps I am too cynical, but when a media company expands out into print it is akin in the software world to a consumer facing product going “B2B” or “focusing on the enterprise”. Or even worse, when a product launches a mobile edition.

But there are billions of dollars trained and momentum behind this easy to understand ad buying. It is a slippery slope to traverse and will be fascinating to see how Insider Pages (who are by far the smartest at monetizing and selling advertising amongst the user-reviewed yellow pages firms) do…

Ken Doctor, a former Knight Ridder digital exec, has an excellent post on CareerBuilder and its growing dominance.